Press Pass:

A good source for quick tips from the perspective of someone who’s being “pitched” all the time: ProPRTips.com by Rafe Needleman.

Tip: Don’t call him Raffi

A few of my favorites:

• The flag on your email says, “Urgent.” My brain says, “Meh.”

• 90 percent of the phone calls I get are people asking if I got the press release they e-mailed. Yes, I got it. Did I read it? Maybe. Do I care? You’d know already.

Oh, wait. Here’s something new and even more annoying: A phone call from a PR person telling me she will be e-mailing me a press release later. Argh! Just send it!

• If your demo tells the story in 10 minutes, don’t drag it out to 30. If your new feature can be described in a one-paragraph e-mail, don’t send two pages of fluff.

• More conference etiquette: Don’t pitch me in the press room. I’m there to write. And you’re not press.

• I really could not care less if you advertise in my publication. Or if, after I write up your company, you stop advertising.

Enjoy!

If not–you should have. With PR, it’s always important to be timely. How does your business leverage the timely events that are happening in your world right now?

Before and through the elections many organizations benefited by participating in some way in their community or nation by targeting some promotion or some part of their messaging and business to the elections.

What did your business do?

If the answer is nothing–all I ask is that you brainstorm a bit and ask yourself how your organization could have participated. The cool thing about the elections this year is that is provided several opportunities.

Promotions are a great way to get involved. Whether you give away free stuff for voting or give out amazing discounts on Black Friday or the day your taxes are due, there are hundreds of opportunities to be timely. The key is to do something worth talking about.

Examples:
Ben and Jerry’s gave out free scoops for voting
Starbucks gave away coffee
Krispy Kreme gave donuts
and
TodaysMama.com teamed up with SitterCity.com to offer free and discounted babysitting to help moms make it to the polls all over the country through our MamaVote Project.

Organizations could have been a sounding board for what people in their demographic thought or felt about the elections (think surveys, demographic studies, etc.). Just think–the Plumbers Association of America (is there one?) could have done a survey of its members to see how they felt about the economy and Obama’s tax policies, and they would have had a screamin’ press release. If your business targets a certain demographic you can identify, you have the room to be the expert on your demographic both in your local community and nationally.

TodaysMama.com does surveys all of the time regarding the different issues affecting mothers and families . . . and then we send a press release about it.

From major magazines and websites down to grassroots community organizations, businesses found a way to get involved. Whether they were targeting content, partnering with other organizations to sponsor events or helping to promote voter registration with a simple button on their site, there were endless ways to get involved.

The Results
Check out a bit of the press we drummed up promoting The MamaVote Project and our Free Sitting Promotion with SitterCity.com:

Over the past year or so and especially close to election day, we got hits from CNN, NewsDay, Parenting Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, the Huffington Post and lots of local media outlets. Check out our press page for more links and details. We also got lots of great local coverage in the various cities we are in across the country.

In addition to great coverage through traditional media outlets, we also talked to bloggers and had some amazing coverage from them (Thank you) :

BettyConfidential.com

MomLogic

Jillian C. York

Startup Princess: Need Someone to Watch Your Kids So You Can Vote?

Bargain Hunting Moms: Free Babysitting on Election Day!

Strollerderby (Babble): Free Babysitting on Election Day!

Working Mother

Hip Mamas Place

Shoplifting with Permission

Daily Cents

5 Minutes for Mom

The Clutter Diet Blog

Cool Mom Picks

Parenting Our Children

Squeaky Stroller

The Integrated Mother

Common Sense with Money

Mama Lounge

Learning Moments of Moms

What are some of the ways you can get involved with other current issues? Think about the economy, Christmas, change–and especially think about what’s going on in your own backyard. I always think the best place to start is in your local community. Is there something going on that has everybody talking? If so–you know what direction you should be headed.

If you haven’t started a blog yet, it’s time. Blogging comes with benefits.

I went to the Web 2.o Expo this week in San Francisco, a “gathering of geeks,” if you will. So as such, of course, it had a fabulous blogger lounge that was anything but geeky. Free massages, Wii on a big screen, music by Pandora, free drinks and–best of all–networking with other bloggers.

Of course, not every conference you go to is going to have a rockin’ blog lounge like the 2.o Expo. But blogging for your business or blogging about your industry gives you opportunities and a level of credibility with others that you wouldn’t have had otherwise. It also gives you access to a whole new network of people whom you would have had no excuse to talk to before. And of course, for those of you searching for someone to talk about you and your business, blogs are a vast new outlet to receive online coverage of your business.

I’m a small fish in a big sea of bloggers, but my various blogs never cease to serve up great contacts for me. Even on a person-to-person level (the real-life stuff), I’m able to meet people because of my blog. We have blogger dinners in our community, local blog networks and, of course, the huge network of bloggers available on the World Wide Web.

So if you’ve been putting off starting your business blog or blogging about a niche in your industry you are passionate about–it’s time.

Ready to start your blog? A few blog resources for you: Wordpress.com, Typepad.com, MoveableType.com, Blogger.com. And for more options, I Googled “Blog Service.”

Happy blogging!

Yes they did.
And they’ll do it again.
So what do you do?

When you are in business and you put yourself in the public sphere, you are going to have to accept not only praise but also criticism. Especially in the blogosphere. So how do you deal with the bad stuff? Go crying to your mama?

Someone took offense to five words of our marketing copy and wrote a 1,000-word rant on her blog. In this case in particular, I have vacillated a bit. As a staff we said our naughty words and then laughed about it. But this particular situation was a little trickier. This blogger didn’t know something about us that was about to benefit the blogger in a big way. I had recommended this particular blogger as a feature for our first magazine, which will launch in her area in June. That means her blog had a full-page feature in a magazine going to almost 200,000 people directly in her market. We had also slated her as a MamaVote featured blogger this summer.

My first impulse is to take vengeance–if she hates us so much, I will pull it, feature someone else and make sure to let her know she missed out. Once I find my Zen place, I say–who cares, I’ll leave it in. I thought her blog had value before, so I’m not going to change it just because she didn’t play nice on the playground. But as we try to take the “high road,” it doesn’t really make us feel any better that we were trashed on her blog.

But I toss this question out to everyone else: What do you do when people say bad things about you or your business in the public sphere? What should your response be? How will you react?

Do you post back on their blog? I chose not to. Who needs online “mommy gang wars”?
Do you mark them as enemy number one to your company? Not a productive use of your resources.
Do you pretend it never happened? While I’d like to, it made for a good blog post.
Do you correct misconceptions? I’d say yes. A follow up e-mail clearing up any inconsistencies is a good idea. But don’t bring on the war!

I wanted better advice on how to handle bad blogger press, and I happened across a good video from Seth Godin right here on Entrepreneur.com–check it out! I couldn’t have asked for more timely information: “Negative Press as a Way of the Online World”

To go the extra mile, I even emailed Godin about our bully on the playground. His response: “It’s not that bad! Comment or write a polite note.”

Lesson for us: It usually looks worse to you and your staff when someone kicks your baby. Buck up!

Lesson for bloggers: You never know what bridges you are about to set ablaze when you blog. Think before you post. For sweet justice, I know that one day I will be seated next to the woman I dedicated a 1,000 word blog post to! I’m sure it will be on an airplane or somewhere uncomfortable!

But what I want to know is how would you handle bad blogger press? I want to hear from the PR pros and novices alike!